THE EMPIRE.—PEACE? [From the Times, October 13.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 793, 9 March 1853, Page 4

THE EMPIRE.— PEACE ? [From the Times, October 13.]

There is a limit to the poweri and even to the ambition of man, which generally confines his attention to one thing tt once, so that whatever minor affairs, whatever distractions or recreations, or subsidiary employments may occupy him for a while, he cannot be really, to use an intelligible figure, — hunting two foxes at once. Ntovr, there are two great objects which may very naturally engage the attention of a man, who, like Louis Napoleon, finds himself in possession of all but absolute power in a great and warlike nation. He may wish to make that power quite absolute, hereditary, dignified with sacred sanctions and high-sounding titles, — in fact, an empire ; or lie may surrender himself to the military genius of his nation, and seek to extend its boundaries, to repair its reverses, or to acquire for it international supremacy. These are wholly distinct objtets, and no man of the smallest discretion who had not thoroughly mastered one -would put his hand to the other, unless, indeed, as was the case at the beginning of this century, conquest should happen to be the only way to empire. The President's reply to the President of the Chamber of Commerce at Bordeaux admits of the simplest interpretation, and may be almost considered sincere. Optat quietem Tantalus. No matt has so good reason to wish for peace at this moment as Louis Napoleon. Peace brings him an easy triumph through the provinces which be has long claimed and never yet seen. He appears everywhere as 4be author of peace. That is the only victory which can by any possible flattery be ascribed to him. War would be a cloud on the fairest day that ever rose on dreams of selfishness. War would bring trouble, reverses, expense, rivals, apd risks of all kinds. But above all, " one thing at once." Be Emperor first, and conqueror in due time. Empire is actually offering itself. It is possible that Louis XIV. and Napoleon liked war for its own sake, and were ready to risk their thrones for conquest and glory. There are men, too, who like fighting as others like bunting, shooting, fishing, and decoying. But Louis Napoleon's taste and faculties are alike of the average order. He is seeking empire, and apparently will grasp the glittering bauble in a very few days. But " there is many a slip '.roixt tbe cop and the lip," and be does not want war, Tn this sense there can be no doubt that the Empire ia peace. It is peace so long as it can only be obtained by peace, and so long as tbe ouly motive for vesting empire in tbe man who asks for it is the memory and the suffering of civil disorders. France has just pasted through, a terrible crisis. Various " families of Ideologists," democratic, socialist, legitimist, and Imperial, have struggled for tbe mastery, and, as uaaajl* happens in an old nation, the Imperial $|«JKnerto < arried tbe day. Soon or late the army conquers a street mob, and an Emperor, the creation of an army, reaps tbe harvest of a revolution. We know this in England, and tbe great reason why Englishmen wou't have a democracy is, that beyond that democracy they see a certain vision of cold-blooded despotism. The Parisian mob is not so prudent ; and they have brought about a state of things so intolerably bad that France accepts a despotism as the lesser evil of the two. In this conflict of "ideas " the Napoleonic have triumphed, for the simple reason indicated by Louis Napoleon himself, that they are less of " ideas," and more an affair of physical force, than the rival ideas. In a street row the frightened do not run to a street orator for protection, or even to an archbishop, but to a policeman i if the row becomes worse, they l^ave him for a soldier ; and so on till they find them - selves behind camps and fortifications. This is not a matter of moral preference or deliberate choice, but of immediate necessity, just as a man who is puisued by a bear will throw himself into the sea, or or if his house is on fire will leap out of the window. France has jumped into Louis Napoleon, tnd both are making the best of it ; indeed, they are quite right to do so. The act might not be very glorious, and refuge might not be much more honourable than the meanest recehses to which tbe pursued have sometimes betaken themselves ; but the only rule of these questions is necessity. Necessity understands tbe proportion of tbe means to the end far better than philosophy. In the fable tbe fox had a tbousaud means oi escape and was* afraid of no | hounds. The cat, on the contrary confessed its terrors, for it had only one resource. The hounds came ; tbe cat ran up the tree, and the fox, after much turning and winding, was run into and killed. French philosophy is the fox that exhibited so much superfluous and unprofitable wisdom. Tbe common sense of the French na*t*on at large is the cat that found a hole, no matter where, but it answered tbe purpose. Louis Napoleon, however, has no sooner heralded his triumph and his title to empire than he distrusts his own •' peace." The idea must be sustained. Brilliant as was the achievement of tbe 2nd of December, it was bardly sufficient for tbe foundation of an eternal dynasty. A thousand years hence Napoleon tbe Hundredth will hardly rest the claims of his dynasty on the massacre of the Boulevards in 1851, or even on tbe provincial tour of 1852. Long ere that day comes something else will be required to sustain tbe flagging loyalty of the people, now so anxious to escape from tbe stigma and perils of citizenship. That something cannot be supplied by public buildings, by lengthening fine streets, by rebuilding cathedrals, by enlarging the circle of fortified towns, or by scraping the outside and painting the inside of the Tuileries. Architecture, upholstery, and the stage management of an Imperial progress through well-prepared cities, can ocly satisfy one phase of the national mind, and that phase is but a short one. Louis admits tbe difficulty, and glances at the conquests still in store for him, when be has effected a safe return to the capital and triumphed over the scruples of the Senate. He will still have to conciliate fashions and to throw into the great current of public opinion the eddies and back currents that now diminish and impedeit. He will have to reclaim and elevate a depressed population. He will have to enter on a vast amount of material under-

takings, railways, canals, roads, ports, packets, and other, utilities, in which France has hitherto permitted herself to be beaten by this country. Bat there are voids that cannot be filled up by mere matter, and there are cravings that rise about works of undoubted* usefulness. An army of half-a-million of men will contain a large proportion of lofty and restless spirits whose daily study and hourly meditation is on the wars of the Republic, and the career of Napoleon and bis marshals, all of whom were once men like themselves. Their field, their talents, their hopes are in war. The morality, the necessity, and the utility of war ate to them matters of ntter indifference. All that they ask is to be led against a foe. As far as they are concerned, it is the duty of the . Government to designate the capital to be occupied, or the fortress to be taken, and it is their place to do it. If there is to be no fighting they are deprived of their due,* and if they are not allowed an opportunity of promotion, plunder, or prize-money, they are disappointed Socialists, neglected in the organization of labour. In the long list of public works enumerated by the President there is not one that would employ a musket or a sabre, unless indeed to keep the labourers at their posts, or to collect the new taxes i this expenditure might entail. It may reasonably be apprehended, therefore, that after a few years of incessant excavation, shipbuilding, housebuilding, and taxation, the half-million soldiers, backed possibly by the sympathy of the people, may a«k what they are to do, and why work is not found for them as for the rest of the people. True, they will wait for an opportunity, but an opportunity will soon be found in some one of those petty misunderstandings which are sure to occur every now and then between two great and jealous powers. The ardour with which the French nation can enter into a race, whether for an Emperor or a Republic, for peace or for war, is singularly exemplified to-day in the proclamation of the Empire by the Mayor of Sevres. In this blasphemous document Louis Napoleon receives all the worship that degenerate Horns lavished on its Ccsars, and still more, inasmuch as tbe titles, the attributes, and the very work of the Saviour are all infamously parodied to describe Louis Napoleon's services to France, and the obligations under which he has laid it. No one can read this paper tbe language of which is too abominable to be quoted more than once in these columns, without a painful conviction of the excesses to which passion or interest will hurry out neigbours. Whether turning out and hunting down a constitutional Sovereign, or cringing to an unconstitutional despot, or fighting an army in the streets, or comparing for the conquest of a continent, or for the supremacy of an ocean, they are still tbe same^, ever running into extremes, retnrning perhaps at last to their senses, but only when they have reaped the bitter fruits of their folly, and, unfortunately,*inflicted an equal share of suffering on all the rest of the world within their reach.